tabacco.blog-city.com — January 2011

BHOF: Before Martin Luther King, There Was Vernon Johns, The Unknown Boat Rocker

Before there was Martin Luther King at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, there was Vernon Johns. He was removed for his strong civil rights stands and sermons. They brought in King to “not rock the boat”. Some move!

Vernon Johns is referred to with reverence as the “Father of the Civil Rights Movement”. God must have wanted the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church to figure prominently in the Civil Rights Movement because it seems, no matter who their pastor was, he was going to make waves, rock the boat and be a thorn in the side of southern bigots, their legal and social system of the 1960s, which codified segregation, racism and inequality.

The administrators, who ran the Negro Church, got rid of Vernon Johns to replace him with someone, who would “not rock the boat”. Martin Luther King was hired as his replacement – boy, what a shock they got.

Inductees into theBlack Hall Of Fame (BHOF)

1 Robert Smalls

2 John Brown

3 Stokely Carmichael/Kwame Ture

4 Vernon Johns

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_Johns

Vernon Johns
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Vernon Johns (April 22, 1892 – June 11, 1965) was an American minister, and inspirational civil rights leader. He was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s predecessor as pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, and a mentor of Ralph Abernathy, Wyatt Walker, and a host of others in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s circle. The father of the American Civil Rights Movement, he laid the foundation on which King and others would build.

Born in Darlington Heights, Virginia, in Prince Edward County. Johns served as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church from 1947 to 1952.

He died of a heart attack in Washington, D. C. in 1965.

Movie

A television film was made in 1994 called Road to Freedom: The Vernon Johns Story, written by Leslie Lee and Kevin Arkadie, and based on an unpublished biography of Johns written by Henry W. Powell, of The Vernon Johns Society. The motion picture was directed by Kenneth Fink and starred James Earl Jones in the title role. Former NBA super-star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, an African-American history buff, was the film’s co-executive producer.

Coretta Scott King (1969:95) wrote that, “My husband and Ralph Abernathy could sit for hours swapping stories about this outspoken minister who always gave his middle-class congregation a very hard time. According to Martin, Dr. Johns’ main purpose was to rock the complacency of the refined members of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church — in whatever way he could.”

Johns’ influence on King was most evident at the level of ideas. “Martin was just fascinated with Vernon Johns,” according to Philip Lenud, King’s friend at Morehouse College and his roommate at Boston College, because “Johns was such a theological genius.” King felt that Johns “was complex, heavy, and funny,” and he and his friend Ralph Abernathy spent many hours exchanging humorous stories about how the outspoken Johns used to rock the complacency of the middle-class, refined members at Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Much of the humor brought to King’s preaching was inspired by Johns. (Baldwin 1991:299-300)

http://members.aol.com/tcal001/vjmlk.html

The Vernon JohnsStory (1994) TV

Directed by Kenneth Fink

Starring James Earl Jones as

Vernon Johns

This is must see for those who are unfamiliar with heroes of the Civil Rights Movement prior to Brown v. the Board of Education and Martin Luther King, Jr. James Earl Jones powerfully portrays a man with all of the courage of Martin Luther King, Jr., but with a more blunt and direct approach. The film masterfully shows how a leader like Dr. King and those who worked with him would have not been as effective had it not been for leaders like Dr. Johns, who were willing to “push the envelope”. I teach Social Studies at Southern Nash High School in Bailey, North Carolina and I use this film regularly in class and get the best response to it of any of the films I show. In a film career that has featured numerous brilliant performances by Mr. Jones, I believe that this is his best work. The supporting cast of veteran actors Mary Alice, the late Joe Seneca, and a newcomer at the time, Nicole Leach, is top notch and they play effectively off of Jones.

“I want to know whether you want students with credits or students with brains,” said Vernon Johns in 1915 to the deputy dean of the Oberlin Theological Seminary (later renamed the Graduate School of Theology). Undaunted by a letter telling him that his credits were useless, Johns had come to the dean’s office and boldly announced that he was willing to start classes.

Johns was tested in the reading of Greek scripture by Edward Increase Bosworth, dean of the seminary. Johns passed the test with flying colors, and Bosworth admitted him on a trial basis. By the end of the semester Bosworth made Johns a regular student and helped him find part-time work as a preacher to support himself while he studied.

Self-taught scholar

Vernon Johns, one of the pioneers of the civil-rights movement, was born in 1892 in Prince Edward County, Virginia. His parents did not have enough money to send him to school, so he educated himself while working. He was frequently seen plowing and reading at the same time. He was said to have a photographic memory, and he was able to recite long biblical passages, including the entire book of Romans. He taught himself Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and German.

Johns’ academic achievements at Oberlin soon made him a scholastic class leader, displacing Robert M. Hutchins. (The future president of the University of Chicago was a freshman in 1915 and left Oberlin in 1917). According to author Taylor Branch, Hutchins said it was impossible for a “country Negro” to make the grades Johns did without cheating. Johns responded to this attack by punching Hutchins in the mouth. The two eventually made up and remained friends for many years. Before his graduation in 1918, Johns was chosen to give the annual student oration at the Memorial Arch. He was highly respected by his classmates, and in later life he spoke of many positive experiences at Oberlin.

(Left: Click on the document to read a letter that Vernon Johns wrote to Oberlin Professor G.W. Fiske two years after Johns’ graduation.)

After graduating from Oberlin, Johns enrolled in the graduate school of theology at the University of Chicago. His success there and his reputation as an intellectual and a preacher brought him many job offers, in the pulpit as well as in the classroom. With his fiery temper, he did not keep any job for long.

Sermon published

He became a wandering preacher, lecturing and farming in the East and South. At this time liberal and fundamentalist preachers were debating issues ranging from biblical interpretation to the social responsibility of preachers. Johns, irritated because no black preachers were included in the debate and none of their sermons were being published, sent the works of his fellow preachers, Mordecai Johnson and Howard Thurman, to publishing houses. When they were rejected, Johns submitted a sermon of his own, “Transfigured Moments”. In 1926 it was the first work by a black preacher to be published in Best Sermons of the year.

Johns acquired a reputation as an eccentric. He would preach immediately after plowing, standing in the pulpit in dirty overalls with mud on his shoes. He would leave his family for months at a time to preach on the road, to farm, and to sell various knickknacks. He liked being able to travel light-sometimes packing all his belongings in a paper bag.

Church in Montgomery

In 1947 Johns found his way to the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. In spite of his eccentricities, its black-elite congregation liked his preaching and his leadership. Within two years, however, he started to speak out about racial issues and to castigate his congregation for ignoring them. He was critical of both the black and the white population of Montgomery.

Race was not a popular topic in the press in the late 194Os. It was assumed that black people would accept their position unquestioningly, but Johns started to make waves. He persuaded black women to bring charges in court against their white rapists, and he helped the women with their cases. No one was convicted, but just getting the white men into court was an achievement. Several years before 1955, when Rosa Parks made history by refusing to move to the back of the bus, Johns tried to sit in the white section. When the bus driver refused to let him, Johns demanded to have his fare back and got it. Johns was even bold enough to order food in an all-white restaurant.

Scolding the congregation

Members of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church congregation were increasingly discomfited by his behavior and by his criticism of them. He scolded them for being consumers unwilling to do manual work. He accused them of doing nothing while their race was being killed. Johns eventually offered his resignation, and the deacons accepted it after much debate. In 1952 Johns was once again a traveling preacher, and the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church searched for a more conservative preacher They found one two years later: Martin Luther King, Jr.

Vernon Johns died in 1965 of a heart attack. He was a man ahead of his time in the civil-rights movement. Believing that all it took for evil to flourish was for good people to do nothing, he did something.

In 1990 Oberlin’s annual minority’s scholars’ day was renamed in honor of Vernon Johns.

Maelinda Turner, president of the class of 1991, wrote the paper on which this article is based for a private reading course with associate professor of black studies Adrienne Jones. Turner used material in the Oberlin College Archives and in Taylor Branch’s Parting the Waters: America in the King Years (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988).

http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/4722.html

Ralph E. Luker

Documenting Vernon Johns …

Apart from shepherding Cliopatria, my day job is preparing the Vernon Johns Papers for publication. So, you’ve never heard of him? It gets worse: his papers were twice destroyed. Not much of a day job, you say?

Well, first of all, Vernon Johns is best known as Martin Luther King’s predecessor as pastor of Montgomery, Alabama’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. That’s how he’s featured in Taylor Branch’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963 (1989) and in Kenneth Fink’s made-for-television film “The Road to Freedom: The Vernon Johns Story” (1994). He ought to be known for more than that because, to my knowledge, he is the only figure who stands in the background both to the litigation leading to the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 and the direct action of the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 and 1956. So, although it is the title of one of his best sermons rather than a claim that he made for himself, my working title is “The Man Who Started Freedom”.

No singly rational person would launch a Vernon Johns Papers Project. The man, himself, was careless with his documents. Notes for a sermon might be scratched out on whatever was at hand – a paper bag, an old letter, or notepaper – and might as readily be discarded. A house fire in 1943 destroyed whatever had accumulated in his first 50 years, and a careless tenant threw out whatever accumulated in the rest of his life. A decade after his death in 1965, his widow and a professional friend collaborated in a book of remnants: Samuel Lucius Gandy, ed., Human Possibilities: A Vernon Johns Reader, Including an Unfinished Book MS., sermons, essays, addresses, and a doggerel. The transcriptions and editing done there are so careless, however, that Johns appears at times to be incoherent, and the book is found only in about a half-dozen American libraries.

Consequently, my most time-consuming job has been in locating, transcribing, and editing whatever documents have otherwise survived, and I am one relentless researcher. He was careless and I am relentless. We have met our match, and we are us. The fact is that I have found a remarkable trove of survivors: a half-dozen taped speeches in remote archives, a treasury of old sermon notebooks at one of his former churches, a collection of sermons previously published as pamphlets, various articles published in obscure journals, two series of columns published in African American newspapers, and a number of letters to the editor. This manic researcher found most of those letters by pouring through 56 fat rolls of microfilm of the Montgomery Advertiser, but it was worth it. The really odd thing is that the white editors of the city’s primary newspaper allowed the pastor of its most prestigious black congregation to tell the newspaper’s white readers exactly what he thought they most needed to hear. For a sample document (pdf), see: here.

My subject, Vernon Johns, is an elusive character, at once sublimely learned and remarkably uncouth. He could preside at a fashionable wedding and then offend the newly-weds by hawking watermelons at their reception. He was born into a family that was the product of unspeakable violence. His white grandfather had owned his grandmother of color before the Civil War. She, rather than his white wife, bore his only children. When she sought a reunion with her slave husband after the war, however, Vernon Johns’ white grandfather violated her with a stick and she bled to death. He paid no penalty for that murder. Only later, when he killed a white field hand, was he sentenced to death by hanging. That whole story is one that was suppressed in the family memory or recalled in more palatable ways. So far as I can tell, Vernon Johns never once referred to his white grandfather in public, but the childhood memory of a white grandfather, who had murdered his grandmother of color runs as a submerged theme through all of his surviving documents. It goes far to explain why Vernon Johns, Martin Luther King’s predecessor as pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, was the apostle of armed resistance. In his later years, he never traveled the South without a loaded weapon at hand, and he was a legendary character in the minds of Martin Luther King, Ralph D. Abernathy, and Wyatt Walker, the core leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

http://www.ralphluker.com/vjohns/

http://www.thatsalabama.com/heroes/vernonjohns/

VERNON JOHNS

Vernon Johns was born in Darlington Heights, Virginia, on April 22, 1892

He was a controversial figure who often spoke out against Blacks as well as Whites. Despite being a preacher, he was not a believer in non-violence and believed in taking whatever action is necessary to achieve God-given or civil rights.

He became the preacher of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery in 1948 and often upset its very conservative congregation. Titles of his sermons included “Segregation After Death”, “Constructive (or Creative) Homicide”, and “When The Rapist Is White”.

He strongly opposed segregation, on one occasion he refused to move into the ‘Colored’ section of a bus he was riding, and on another, walked into a ‘White’ restaurant and ordered a sandwich, knowing fully that he was putting his life at risk in doing so.

In 1949 following a string of murders and other violent acts against blacks, Johns changed the name of his planned sermon to “It Is Safe To Kill Negroes In Montgomery”. This outraged the white community and led to him being summoned before the grand jury.

He believed that Black people should support each other economically and encouraged the Black people of Montgomery to sell produce such as fruit and vegetables to each other, instead of buying goods from the White man. He would sell fruit, vegetables and even fish to the congregation.

Over time, his relationship with the board of deacons became increasingly strained and on several occasions, he resigned his position. The final straw came when he drove onto the campus of Alabama State University and sold a truckload of watermelons. The deacons were highly upset, and the church finally accepted his fifth resignation.

Vernon Johns moved back to Virginia, and in 1953 Dexter Avenue Baptist Church finally appointed their new preacher, a young man by the name of Martin Luther King.

Pastorium, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church
Home of Martin Luther King, Jr., family & Vernon Johns family

http://www.dexterkingmemorial.org/m_photos.cfm

T.A.B.A.C.C.O. (Truth About Business And Congressional Crimes Organization)

Comments

‘A visitor‘ left this comment on 31 Mar 11

Hi Tobacco! I’m working on a project for a seminary class that includes Rev. Dr. Vernon Johns. I want to reference your original comments at the beginning of this post in my presentation and give you credit for it. Can you tell me who you are, why you wrote this post and if this BHOF is your personal HOF or if it is part of a larger project? I enjoyed your post and look forward to hearing from you.

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‘A visitor‘ left this comment on 31 Mar 11

Hi Tobacco! I’m working on a project for a seminary class that includes Rev. Dr. Vernon Johns. I want to reference your original comments at the beginning of this post in my presentation and give you credit for it. Can you tell me who you are, why you wrote this post and if this BHOF is your personal HOF or if it is part of a larger project? I enjoyed your post and look forward to hearing from you.Hi Michelle: Be my guest! I wrote this Post to make people aware of a man, who deserves credit for advancing 1960s Civil Rights movement, but, through a quirk of Fate, is an historical footnote. Had I not seen the James Earl Jones’ film, I would not know of Vernon Johns.The BHOF is my personal invention for those, who deserve credit, but remain basically anonymous in America. Israeli, Mordechai Vanunu, White, John Brown, and Slave, Robert Smalls, are three of my inductees! Of the three, only John Brown has any public recognition whatsoever, and he is considered a pariah by most, but not by me.As to who I am, well I have already given out too much information on that subject! I have made enemies with my blog. I am more circumspect now in talking about myself. Besides this blog is about others, not myself!I am Black, male, 69, college (Howard), live on L. I., NY, classmate and Whist partner of Stokely Carmichael in 1960-61 at Howard. I want people to know the Truth and not the Propaganda generally dispensed in our Media.And my Blog identity is Tabacco, not Tobacco! I gave up smoking at 7 or 8 years of age. Tabacco is an Acronym: Truth About Business And Congressional Crimes Organization.

Please advise when your work appears on Internet. I went to itc.edu before writing this. However, short of e-mailing you directly, I have no way of knowing whether you are affiliated with itc or a clever stalker. Remember everyone has access to this Comment.

Best wishes, Tabacco

‘Tabacco‘ left this comment on 21 Feb 11

I’m currently watching the film ’2012′ with John Cusack. It’s an end of the earth disaster film. Danny Glover, a Black actor, plays the US President. Why is it that whenever there is an end of the world disaster film, the US President is generally a Black man? Well, at least those Black actors get to work in these films!TabaccoPS There is a real Black man currently in the United States Oval Office! I wonder!

‘A visitor‘ left this comment on 28 Jan 11

…and then perhaps some more personal info about you will trickle out.Ah, it’s going to anyways. Just deciding when to go into the blogosphere with all of it. Some is already on a webpage, some is not.Don’t care what you publish. Just think it would show some character to put your name on your work. Guess maybe I’ll do it for you.People like you do not have the respect of decent men. And do tell, Chomps, why do you lack the courage to do so? What are you so afraid of? You speak with such bravado, and it doesn’t really make sense that you would hide behind a keyboard, Harold E. Taylor of Wright St in West Babylon, NY, owner of Braxton international, and bankrupt blogger.I think we both know the answer, Chomps. Sad as it may be for you to realize, much less admit, your ideas are outdated, and to stamp your name on them publicly would be an embarrassment to yourself, and probably your family and friends. Society has rejected your garbage. And being a racist with the lack of character you display is very, very bad for business. And survival.To put it simply, you’re a bitch clinging to a number of bankrupt (pun intended) ideologies, and you have no place to spew them other than anonymously on the internet.

Do you realize what type of person behaves like this?

The Smette family would like to take a look at my website too, I’m sure. If I care enough, perhaps I’ll eventually let them know who you are. Right now, I don’t. Don’t know if I want to cause that much trouble anyways. But I do think it’s fair for them to know who the bitch sniping at them anonymously on the internet is. Don’t you?

Lastly, veneers are not that expensive. Look into it.

LOL.

‘Tabacco‘ left this comment on 28 Jan 11

Gorgon:Thanks for the reminder! As soon as I publish Post I’ve been holding back because of success of Dream Act, I shall republish the Smette Posts! Thanks again for reminding me!TabaccoPS Apparently your appearance is that disgusting – looks like I struck paydirt!

‘A visitor‘ left this comment on 27 Jan 11

“Incidentally, Readers realize you attack that way because you have no logical, ethical or moral ground to stand on! You are a pitiful, empty person, bereft of purpose or humanity!”Says the guy that harrasses the family of a fallen solder and published pictures of and posted personal insults about someone based on the words of another.P-R-O-J-E-C-T-I-O-N.Get the fuck over yourself, Chomps.LOL!Incidentally, I don’t care if you publish me. It’s not for anyone else to read anyways. It’s aimed toward you.

Question: Are there no dentists in West Babylon, NY? Does Braxton International not offer some sort of plan that would allow you to get your ghetto fangs fixed?

Oh…that’s right. You filed bankruptcy. Can’t afford it I guess.

My bad, Chomps.

‘Tabacco‘ left this comment on 27 Jan 11

Gorgon:HELL, NO! I insulted you and I’ve never seen you! I make fat jokes about people, who are not fat. I make ugly jokes about people, who are not ugly! I would never make fat jokes to fat people except for one exception: MORALLY CORRUPT, SELFISH, EXPLOITATIVE PERSONS LIKE RUSH LIMBAUGH & YOURSELF – with those persons, all bets are off and everything goes. You make dental jokes about people, whose teeth are imperfect just because we try to help average people fight against the Super-Rich Exploiters. See the difference!Incidentally, Readers realize you attack that way because you have no logical, ethical or moral ground to stand on! You are a pitiful, empty person, bereft of purpose or humanity!If you had something to say on issues, you’d get published! Since you don’t, it’s just you and me, pal!Tabacco

‘A visitor‘ left this comment on 26 Jan 11

Are you saying that you haven’t attacked people personally? Brought up the appearance of another? Ridiculed in a mean-spirited way?Sorry, Chomps, I’m calling bullshit on that one. I’ve seen you do it. Again, the hypocrisy is mindnumbing.But perhaps I shouldn’t be ridiculing an obese, bankrupt guy that can’t afford to fix his teeth? Maybe I shouldn’t?Ah fuck it. This is too much fun. I’ve baited you into a fight about your teeth.Yeah….tell me how fucking clever you are.Chomps.

LOL.

‘Tabacco‘ left this comment on 25 Jan 11

Gorgon:If you hit a nerve with the “teeth” comment about my dental imperfections, I wouldn’t be publishing my reply for all the world to see – now would I! Your reasoning abilities are minimal at best!But keep trying! Maybe one day, if you throw enough spaghetti on the refrigerator, maybe something will stick! But I doubt it! I am much more sensitive about my mind and my logic than I am about my appearance! Fortunately, your only arguments are “AD HOMINEM” because you are incapable of LOGICALLY attacking MY arguments – you therefore attack me personally. How un-clever of you!You, on the other hand, must be quite sensitive about your own appearance. That’s why you think I should be sensitive about mine. See, that’s how logic works. Your comment reveals more about you than it does about me!Is your appearance that disgusting?Love & Kisses

‘A visitor‘ left this comment on 25 Jan 11

OMG I think I hit a nerve with the teeth comment.Haha.

‘A visitor‘ left this comment on 24 Jan 11

…got a nice picture of you up there too. Also, I’m not giving you the web address anyways.PS: consider dental work.

‘Tabacco‘ left this comment on 24 Jan 11

Gorgon:Thanks for the TRIBUTE!TabaccoPS I will not, nor shall not visit your SHRINE to me – but thanks anyway!PSS I’ve gotten along for 60 years without dental work. I think I can go on as I am! I’m not that vain! You are displaying your own insecurities, not mine!

‘A visitor‘ left this comment on 24 Jan 11

u now have a blog dedicated to you.You can either start stamping your name on your work here, or i will do it for you.LOL.Good luck Harold.

‘Tabacco‘ left this comment on 23 Jan 11

AMERICAN INJUSTICE: “Imitation Of Life”, starring Lana Turner, 1959!The scene when Annie, the obviously Black woman, goes to the school where her daughter Sarah Jane, age 8 (played by Karin Dicker), is passing for White!Annie walks right up to her seemingly White daughter and in effect OUTS her as Black for all her White classmates! Outside in the rain Sarah Jane says, “They didn’t ask me; why should I tell them!”To which her mother replies, “Because that’s what you are, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of!”This movie, like all Hollywood films of those days, was controlled by Jews and/or Whites, not Blacks! The question is not one of SHAME; the question is one of DISCRIMINATION! No “high yellar” Negro should have been ashamed of “passin’ for White” in those days because of this preachy Jewish film or others of the same ilk: “Pinky”, “Band of Angels”, “Lost Boundaries” and “Gone With The Wind”! If Hollywood Jews did not want Blacks to be ashamed of their “blackness”, why didn’t Hollywood do a much better job of integrating Blacks in 1959! And why did Ava Gardner get the role of Julie Laverne (a mulatto Negress) in 1951′s “Show Boat” instead of Lena Horne, who could actually sing! Could it be because Jeanne Crain (Pinky), Yvonne DeCarlo (Band of Angels), Mel Ferrer and family (Lost Boundaries) and all the actresses playing Sarah Jane in both Imitation of Life films were all WHITE although the roles they played depicted BLACKS! (One exception: Fredi Washington (mulatto) as Peola Johnson, age 19, in 1934′s Imitation of Life). It seems Jew-run Hollywood was much better on Race Issues in 1934 than it was in 1959!Blacks did NOT create RACIAL DISCRIMINATION – WHITES DID! Jews changed their names to Christian ones and nobody knew the difference. But the Negro problem cannot be solved so easily generally speaking. Those few instances, when Blacks could become “invisible” like name-changing Jews, were when they were light enough to pass. The only Hollywood film, which in any way castigates a Jew for name-changing to blend in, is “Gentlemen’s Agreement” 1947. When I worked for someone else, the two bosses (both Jews) changed their names to Blaine and Sanders from Schauerman and another ethnic name to blend in. The only time Sanders ever divulged his own Jewishness was when he knew he had another Jew on the phone. Then he used his Jewishness to augment his business pitch! If Jews were and are â€œashamedâ€ to be Jews, then why was it wrong for Blacks to be â€œashamedâ€ to be Black as depicted in Jewish Hollywood films!

Hollywood’s Jews practiced a policy of “Do as I say, not as I do!”

The preaching in those 6 films (“Pinky”, “Band of Angels”, “Lost Boundaries”, “Gone With The Wind” and “Imitation of Life” 1959 and 1934 (Claudette Colbert) is the reason I watch none of them today! The message is PURE PROPAGANDA! It dId not serve Blacks; it served WHITE RACISTS – and it still does!

In her autobiography, Carol Channing admits that she is BLACK!

J. Edgar Hoover never admitted anything. But we now know Hoover was both BLACK and HOMOSEXUAL DRAG QUEEN! Hoover persecuted both Blacks and Homosexuals. I revere Channing and abhor Hoover. From my prior comments you may infer the reasons why! Channing did her thing and kept her mouth shut! Lena Horne wasn’t that light and her career suffered because of it! Hoover was a HYPOCRITE much like Clarence Thomas. He turned on his own people (Blacks and Gays) to preserve his own anonymity. No wonder Hoover had files on everybody, including Presidents!

Additional note: one of the best places to start looking up your family tree, if you are Black, is with the Mormons. They kept Negro birth, marriage and death records, not because they were so unbiased, but because they wanted to maintain the lily-white character of their own Religious membership! They didn’t want Negro “passers-for-white” to infiltrate their ranks!

Tabacco

‘Tabacco‘ left this comment on 17 Jan 11

In Behalf of Martin Luther King and Vernon Johns:There have always been Negroes, who don’t want to “rock the boat”. They were there in the 1960s, and they are still with us today. Fear is sometimes a useful emotion, but it must not be allowed to prevent good people from seeking their human rights or redressing wrongs perpetrated on them by the Immoral Majority!Slavery is no longer legal. But Black and Hispanic people populate America’s prisons.Segregation is unconstitutional, but America’s Churches, Schools and Neighborhoods prove otherwise.America is and always has been a land of HYPOCRISY! An Evil Majority always preserves its own Privileges, its own Power, and its own Exploitations.Those Negroes, who have forgotten the Civil Rights Movement or think that it is over, are grossly mistaken. Once a movement – any movement – ceases to function actively and aggressively, those forces that initiated the Abominations will regroup and reestablish that Abomination in yet another form.

We can never stand still in History. Either we step forward or we step backward.

Personal to Keith S. Johns, Sr.You neglected to include your email address. This will not be published for public view.Some people have nothing better to do than post fake requests and assume fictitious identities, so personals such as yours cannot be made public unless Tabacco has some contact information, which can be verified.If you are truly Keith S. Johns, Sr., and your request is genuine, Tabacco would be proud to be of assistance to you.Please Comment again with contact information.Tabacco

Tabacco: I consider myself both a funnel and a filter. I funnel information, not readily available on the Mass Media, which is ignored and/or suppressed. I filter out the irrelevancies and trivialities to save both the time and effort of my Readers and bring consternation to the enemies of Truth & Fairness! When you read Tabacco, if you don’t learn something NEW, I’ve wasted your time.

Tabacco is not a blogger, who thinks; I am a Thinker, who blogs. Speaking Truth to Power!

In 1981′s ‘Body Heat’, Kathleen Turner said, “Knowledge is power”.

T.A.B.A.C.C.O.(Truth About Business And Congressional Crimes Organization) – Think Tank For Other 95% Of World: WTP = We The People

Anyone may Comment here, but if you want your Comment published, you must obey the TABACCO RULES as stipulated in:

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